


Lunar Waltz

by Druddigonite



Category: Avatar: The Last Airbender
Genre: Alternate Universe - No Bending (Avatar TV), Alternate Universe - Supernatural Elements, Alternate Universe - Werewolf, Gen, haha get it, lycantoph, or maybe, the au nobody needed, weretoph
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-22
Updated: 2019-06-22
Packaged: 2020-05-16 07:09:06
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 565
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19313155
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Druddigonite/pseuds/Druddigonite
Summary: AU drabble. Toph is chained to her bed in the secluded Beifong estate. Outside, the air is alive.





	Lunar Waltz

**Author's Note:**

> Been wallowing in a creative rut these past weeks. I have like 5 drafts of stories I'm too scared to submit and here I am posting something I wrote at two in the morning.

"It's dangerous to go out there, sweetie."

Toph's hands clench under her blankets, sharpened nails digging painfully into palm. She senses the bed shift—her father, standing up—as his footsteps lead him to the door. His movements are steady, deliberate, but she can feel the erratic beat of his heart, jackhammering against his ribs. 

_Maybe,_ Toph thinks, viciously, _but that's not what you're afraid of, isn't it?_

(She doesn't even need her lie-sense to tell; the manacles on her wrists and ankles speak for themselves.)

"It's for your own good, Toph," her father has the gall to add—lying, again—once the new door lock clicks shut with an air of finality. "We love you. Goodnight."

His steps fade into the distance. 

Toph’s breathing is heavy against her ears, the manacles chafing uncomfortably against her skin. If the time spent with her father is aggravating, then the silences that follow become downright enraging. Well, silence isn't the best way to put it. Toph just isn't in the right mindset to call it anything else.

The last few days of the lunar cycle were a culmination, but nothing prepares Toph for those nights when the bright rays of a full moon floods her window, and everything is _alive_. She can make out the individual chirps of each cricket outside, catch a hint of her father's lingering fear in the tepid air, taste blood from where her nails managed to prick her skin. Slowly, the layout of her house is revealed to her: a network of wooden boards laid against cement, the dampness of laundry in the washing room, two warm, pulsing bodies ( _flesh flesh blood blood_ ) in her parent's sleeping quarters, at the other end of their estate. After weeks relying on nothing but vague voices and guiding fingers, Toph cries out at the overload of information.

The clock strikes midnight, and that cry morphs into a snarl. She feels her body elongating, muscles and bones and sinew crack, stretch, thicken. With a savage yank her left hand's manacle flies across the room, smashing a dent in the wall with its jarring crash. The rest follow soon after. 

Under normal circumstances Toph would worry about stealth and property damage and all those things that would get her into a lot more trouble long-term, but the moon beckons, rays soaking into her thirsty skin until common sense devolves into a dull roar, until her mind is a frenzied mantra of _out, out, out, out_.

The window shatters on the fourth hit.

She uses her head to do it, the shards cutting across her face, her eyes, her snout and ears, yet the pain never registers. Tastes the clear night. Hits the ground running, transitioning seamlessly from two legs to four before she's streaking past the edge of the estate, into the woods that isolate it. 

There's dew on the grass, earth damp from an evening drizzle; Toph howls into the sky and hears the echo of freedom.

The rest of the night is a blur she can't recall. She vaguely remembers tearing through the trees, gouging at a boulder with her claws. More howling. Maybe getting her nuzzle bloodied with kills once or twice.

When dawn breaks her parents find their dirtied little girl curled against the clover grass, and take her home.  
  
  
  
  
The next full moon, Toph's windows are nailed shut.

(She gets out anyways.)


End file.
